Malik-Shah I

Okay, so the Seljuk Empire spans from the steppe borders to the Mediterranean, or very close to the Mediterranean coast.

As a result, it borders on many different countries, emirates and sultanates and kingdoms.

It's got a lot of neighbors, and most of those neighbors, in some way, shape or form, have been pushed back by the Seljuks during their invasions.

And so when the Seljuks descend into civil war, and they descended to civil war about five years before the first Crusade arrives following the assassination of the Seljuk sultan, Malik Shah.

The idea of laws of nature slowly evolves itself in its sublime simplicity and universality, and the idle causes of phenomena which mythology had fabricated in the personal caprices of certain deified abstractions melt away of themselves like shadows in the light of morning.

but under all these erroneous figments there lay the primitive instinct of some first cause the obstinate unconquerable want which no created thing can fill and this remained untouched amidst the change as the soul when the body is shattered but this lucretius did not understand he proceeded from the gods of mythology to demolish the very idea of a providence at all the very truth which he had grasped so firmly that nature obeys certain unvarying laws led him astray must imply a lawgiver's sanction and authority and that long before greek or roman size in an unlettered people whose very name greece and rome despised ancient seers had recognized the scientific principle and yet at once subordinated it to the highest truth when they sang of man's impotence to break god's covenant of the day and of the night that there should not be day and night in their season Footnote.

The word covenant, bedith, occurs several times in Scripture to express the laws which God has imposed on nature.

And in Jeremiah, chapter 33, verse 25, we have the word ordinances, hukoth, used in the same sense.

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such is the narrative of nizam ul mulk the famous vizier of alp ashlan and of his son and successor malik shah who gives this story of his youth in his political will wasia nizam ul mulk that is testamentum which he wrote in his old age as a manual to future statesmen he goes on to state that years passed by and both his old school friends found him out and came and claimed a share in his good fortune according to the school-day vow the vizier was generous and kept his word hassan demanded a place in the government which the sultan granted at the vizier's request but discontented with the gradual rise he plunged into the maze of intrigue of an oriental court and failing in a base attempt to supplant his benefactor he was disgraced and fell his subsequent adventures are one of the romances of oriental history after many mishaps and wanderings he became the head of the persian sect of the ismailians a party of fanatics who had long murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil eminence under the guidance of his strong and evil will.

In A.D. 1090 he seized the castle of Alamut in the province of Rudbar, which lies in the mountainous tract south of the Caspian Sea.

Here he fixed his stronghold, and it was from this mountain home that the sheikh obtained that evil celebrity among the crusaders as the old man of the mountains.

from alamut issued those fierce fanatics who in blind devotion to their chief's commands spread terror through the mohammedan world and it is yet disputed whether the word assassin which they have left in the language of modern europe as their dark memorial is derived from the hashish or opiate of hemp leaves the indian bung with which they madden themselves to the sullen pitch of oriental desperation or from the name of the founder of the dynasty whom we have seen in his quiet collegiate days at nishapur to complete the picture we need only add that one of the countless victims of the assassin's dagger was nizam ul mulk himself the old schoolboy friend omar khayyam also came to the vizier to claim his share but not to ask for title or office the greatest boon you can confer on me he said is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune to spread wide the advantages of science and pray for your long life and prosperity the vizier tells us that when he found that he was really sincere in his refusal he pressed him no further but granted him a yearly pension of twelve hundred mithkils of gold from the treasury of neshipur at neshipur thus lived and died omar khayyam the poet astronomer of persia busied adds the vizier in winning knowledge of every kind and especially in astronomy wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence under the sultanate of malik shah he came to merv and obtained great praise for his proficiency in science and the sultan showered favours upon him omar's attainments as an astronomer we have ample proof when malik shah determined to reform the calendar he was one of the eight learned men employed to do it and the result was the jalali era so called from the jalal ul din one of the king's names a computation of time says gibbon which surpasses the julian and approaches the accuracy of the gregorian style he is also the author of some astronomical tables entitled zidji malik shai and we have placed at the head of our article a treatise of his on algebra which has been lately translated and published in europe of the particular incidents of his life we know little enough for probably there was little to know a life like his spent in quiet toil and hiving knowledge with each studious year leaves little for the chronicler to record His Takalis, or poetical name, Kayam, signifies a tent-maker, and he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before Nizam-ul-Mulk's generosity raised him to independence.

Many Persian poets similarly derive their names from their occupations.

Thus we have Attar, a druggist, Assar, an oil-presser, etc., omar himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines khayyam who stitched the tents of science has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned the shears of fate have cut the tent ropes of his life and the broker of hope has sold him for nothing We have only one more anecdote to give, and that relates to the clothes, and then we shall turn from Omar, the mathematician, to the more interesting character, Omar the poet.

It is, however, only fair to state that Mr. Fitzgerald based his version on the very small Récu in the Berdlian, manuscript Usely, 140, containing several quatrains not found in the editions of the imperial dragoman which seems to have appeared just too late to be of any practical use to the english poet the oxford codex which scanty as it is must be admitted to be one of the oldest redactions it was transcribed in fourteen sixty one is well represented in Mr. E. H. Winfield's scholarly edition of the Rubaiyat, Khubna, 1883, to which the reader is referred for bibliographical and biographical particulars.